240 
Mr. Blythes Commentary 
making such a mistake), are decidedly A. virgatus *. In the 
Report on Japanese Ornithology accompanying the narrative of 
Commodore Perry's Expedition, it is stated of A. gularis that 
“ The young bird is darker above than represented in the figure 
of the adult male in the plate in ‘ Fauna Japonica/ and has the 
transverse bars on the underparts much less regular and lighter- 
coloured than in the figure of the female in the same plate." 
I have little doubt of there being some misapprehension re¬ 
garding the alleged occurrence of Micronisus soloensis (“ Nisus 
minutus, Lesson," Pucheran, Rev. Zool. 1850, p. 200) on the 
Coromandel coast, for I have never seen it even from the 
Malayan peninsula. Professor Schlegel gives it from Java, 
Celebes, the Philippines, and China. 
26. Aquila chrysaetus. 
The great Berkut or Bjurkut Eagle of Mongolia referred to is, 
I suspect, a much larger and more powerful bird than A. chry¬ 
saetus, to judge only from the feats credibly reported of it by 
Atkinson f and others, even as Haliaetus pelagicus and the great 
Tibetan Raven are considerably more powerful birds than H. 
albicilla and Corvus corax. I saw such an Eagle on board an 
American vessel in Calcutta, wherein it had been brought from 
California, and have seen no other that even approached it in 
* My original description of A. nisoides may here be quoted:—“Pre¬ 
sumed female in mature plumage, differing only from that of A. nisus in 
its much inferior size, being smaller than the male of A. nisus, and in having 
the throat streakless white, excepting a narrow median dark line; the usual 
lateral lines occur, but not conspicuously, which are observable in various 
species of Hawks, Eagle-Hawks, &c. Length of wing in.; of tail 5| in.; 
tarsi If in.; middle toe and claw 1^ in.” I have seen three nearly similar 
specimens of this Sparrow-Hawk, all received from Malacca, and it is much 
more closely akin to A. nisus than is A. virgatus. No trace of ferruginous 
colouring underneath was observable in any one of the three. They were 
of the size of the male A. nisus, or somewhat smaller, with the plumage of 
a non-rufous adult female of that species, combined with the trilineated 
throat of A. virgatus, the affinity, I repeat, being much closer to the former 
species than to the latter. When writing the foregoing remarks I had not 
the ‘Fauna Japonica’ at hand. Now that it is before me, I recognize in 
the figure of the female A. gularis an exact representation of my A. nisoides. 
t Travels in Oriental and Western Siberia, p. 493. Pennant (Arctic 
Zoology, ii. p. 195) mentions Eagles being trained by the Tartars to attack 
"Wolves! 
